Short Cut Akai-Ito-Kai

Short-cut approach to Japanese Companies

Not many Japanese companies hire doctoral graduates because they prefer to train and educate new employees of undergraduate or master course graduates from the scratch. Because of globalization and fast change in international market, some companies have changed their policy to seriously consider hiring doctor course graduates because they no longer have luxury of time/cost to train its employees.

S-cubic, which is for Japanese and those who are excellent in Japanese proficiency, has long been working with companies to promote the value of hiring doctors. Thanks to their 9+ years of efforts, more than 300 excellent Japanese companies have been actively enrolling to S-cubic’ match-making event called “Akai-Ito-Kai” or AIK for short. Those 300+ AIK member companies already understands the value of hiring doctors. There are three AIK events each year, two in Sapporo and one in Tokyo. Because of high Japanese proficiency requirements (N-1 or above), AIK is not for International Researchers in English course. When I-HoP started communicating with some of the AIK member companies, they expressed interest in hiring international researchers who can communicate with in English. Because of the severe international competition which these companies are facing with, they consider hiring those talented individuals from abroad to enhance their human resource diversity.

Therefore, I-HoP has decided to explore a possibility of introducing the English-preferred doctors to the AIK companies. The program, tentatively named SCAIK (Short-Cut Akai Ito Kai) proceeds with the following steps:1. List URL of English homepages of the companies attending the next AIK (15-16 companies) on the I-HoP homepage.2. International Researchers to pick one or two from the AIK company list and conduct survey by themselves of the future direction of the companies selected.3.International Researchers to prepare a report, no more than two pages, in English describing “Why the company must hire you”. The report contains the researcher’s view on the future direction of the company selected, and a scenario how the researcher can make the future direction possible.4.International Researchers to submit the report by email to I-HoP by the date specified. (Normally 10 days before the next AIK)5.I-HoP, on behalf of the International Researcher, will hand-deliver the report to the company representatives who will be attending the AIK and ask them for consideration. I-HoP will follow up periodically with the company, and obtain the report (Yes, No, Further Clarification required) within one month.